


The Best-Laid Pranks

by MiraMira



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Humor, Innuendo, Prank Wars, Starfleet Academy, Traditions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-30
Updated: 2014-10-30
Packaged: 2018-02-23 05:49:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2536460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiraMira/pseuds/MiraMira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim doesn't mean to start a prank war with Uhura his first Halloween at Starfleet Academy.  It just...happens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Best-Laid Pranks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jouissant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jouissant/gifts).



> Happy Halloween, jouissant! I hope this treat fills your craving for Uhura and Jim friendship.

The first year at Starfleet Academy, Jim doesn't put much thought into his Halloween pranking. He isn't even sure why he includes Uhura on the list of targets, even as he balances a bucket of water precariously above the doorway she's about to step through and ties a rope to the handle. Heaven knows she's not going to take it well.

And she doesn't. Barely one minute after her shrieks have subsided, she comes storming up to him, water streaming everywhere. “I realize this may be a difficult concept for you to grasp, but not every holiday is April Fool's Day.”

“They don't have trick-or-treating where you're from?” Jim waggles his eyebrows. “Of course, if you want to go with the other option...”

Uhura rolls her eyes. “You are _never_ getting a treat from me, Kirk.”

“Then you're going to have to get better at tricks, aren't you?” Jim grins.

And just like that, a tradition is born.

-

Second year, Uhura makes the mistake of leaving her PADD unattended and unlocked. In the five minutes she's gone, Jim changes her background to a picture of him, and her password to “i<3jtk.” She declines his offers of assistance “with adequate compensation” and cracks it in fifteen, sneering at his predictability.

For her part, Uhura leaves a whoopee cushion in plain sight on his chair in Intermediate Tactics. He's so proud of her for trying, he sits on it anyway.

-

Third year, Jim takes advantage of a pre-Halloween rendezvous with Gaila to set Uhura's wake-up alert back by about six hours. According to later reports from Gaila, Uhura makes it halfway across campus before she realizes why it's still dark out.

He never does figure out how Uhura gains access to the shower settings or overrides his programmed preferences to “maximum pressure, no heat,” but he makes a point of asking if she has any suggestions for warming him up instead of admitting he's impressed. Clearly he's going to need to step things up next year.

-

Fourth year, Jim enlists some of the younger engineering students in devising an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine designed to spray Uhura with multicolored, water-soluble dye. He waits in vain outside her Advanced Vulcan Colloquialisms seminar, only to learn she's just dropped the class in favor of an independent study option.

Uhura's plan is simpler, but more effective. She obtains a pair of Kirk's boxers from Gaila and douses them liberally in itching powder.

Turns out itching powder is yet another item on the long, long list of things to which James Tiberius Kirk is allergic. Uhura comes to visit him in the infirmary.

“Truce?” she asks, expression ashen. Jim's about to protest he can't look _that_ bad, when he realizes why she's so scared. If it were her lying in this infirmary bed, he wouldn't be here right now, where the worst punishment on offer is McCoy's glowering: he'd be standing before a disciplinary committee explaining why they shouldn't expel him. One word from him, and her Starfleet career – the career she's worked her whole life for, the goal that will never truly let her relax until she achieves it, the reason she needs his jokes so damn badly to liven up an otherwise drudge-filled existence – is scuttled.

“Truce,” he says, and refuses to give the matter another thought. All's fair in love and prank war. And since he's pretty sure by now that he and Uhura are never going to date, he'll take the relieved smile that breaks across her face.

-

“Lieutenant!” Kirk bellows, dangling the whoopee cushion he's just removed from the captain's chair between his thumb and forefinger. “I believe we had a truce?”

“Oh, that wasn't me, Captain.” Uhura flashes a grin at Spock.

“Nyota has explained the custom of 'trick or treat' to me as it is practiced in Riverside, Iowa,” Spock explains. Kirk still can't always tell the difference between standard Vulcan inflection and humor, but he's pretty sure he detects a hint of amusement in the commander's voice. “I thought it might be...instructive to participate.”

“Instructive, eh?” Jim matches Uhura's grin. “Well, Spock, if you're looking to study the fine art of Halloween pranking, prepare yourself for a master class.”


End file.
